The conclusions of a new survey about the demographics in our country are disappointing. The natural balances (births-deaths) in our country have changed sign, turning for the first time in our post-war history from positive to negative, essentially after 2010.

The continued increase in the elderly population has caused a rise in deaths that began in the early 1950s, while the continued decline in the number of children couples have caused the birth rate to decline after 1980.

The opposite courses of deaths and births inevitably led, from a point on, to the supremacy of the former over the latter, a supremacy that is constantly growing: 38.5 thousand fewer births than deaths in the three years 2011-13 and 111 thousand in 2017- 2019 (113 deaths /100 births in the first and 143 in the second).

However, in the three-year period 2020-22, the deficit widened significantly as the natural balance was negative by almost 169 thousand, resulting in 168 deaths per 100 births.

The epidemic, causing increased mortality, accelerated the increase in deaths, while the effects on births were limited, as their decrease (-13 thousand between the two aforementioned three years) was a little greater than expected.

These are some of the first conclusions reported in a digital bulletin of the Institute for Demographic Research and Studies (IDEM) on the topic “The deterioration of the natural balance at the national and regional level (2020-22) and its ominous prospects”. The two authors of this article (Professors Byron Kotzamanis and Vassilis Pappas, founding members of IDEM) also state that if the increase in deaths after their return to 130 thousand in 2023 will be milder in the coming years, the births per year will be on average significantly less than the 82 thousand we had in 2020-22 as the number of women of childbearing age will continue to decline while no radical changes are expected in the wider family and childbearing environment.

Natural balances will therefore remain negatively fluctuating around 55 thousand, while the ratio of births to deaths, despite all its fluctuations, will not change significantly in the future.

The two researchers also report that variations in this ratio and its deviations from the average of the three years 2020-22 (1.68 deaths per birth at the national level) are significant and widen by passing from the Regions to the Regional Units, and, in then, in the Municipalities and Municipal Units. They find in particular, analyzing the data, that at the level of the Regions, the South Aegean with slightly more births than deaths, is significantly different from Western Macedonia where there are almost 2.4 deaths/birth.

The deviations from the national average widen in the Regional Units as only in five of them, births are significantly more than deaths and in four, deaths and births do not differ significantly, while, at the other extreme, in eleven Regional Units correspond to 2.5 or even more deaths per birth.

At the level of municipalities (325 units), the differences between the Municipality of Thira with 2 births per one death, and, at the other extreme, 49 municipalities (15% of the total) with more than 4 deaths/birth (and 20 of them with 6 or more) are sensational.

Finally, at the level of Municipal Units (MUs), the deviations from the national average (1.68) widen even more: if in 19 of them (2.1% of the total) births exceed deaths, in 27 we have only deaths, in 348 -1/3-, 4 or more and in 196 (19% of the total) 6 or more deaths per birth! According to the two researchers, the great majority of the Municipal Units of the insular area, the large urban centers as well as those of the metropolitan areas of Athens and Thessaloniki have very positive or even relatively balanced natural balances. On the contrary, the imbalance between births and deaths is pronounced in the great majority of the Municipal Units located in the central and western part of mainland Greece as well as in the Central-An. Macedonia and Thrace where in 2020-22 there were usually 3 or more deaths per birth, while in this part of mainland Greece, almost all the 27 Municipal Units that had no births in 2020-22, but only deaths, can be found.

Speaking to the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency, the director of the Institute of Demographic Research and Studies Prof. Byron Kotzamanis emphasizes that if a ratio at the national level of 1.68 deaths/birth is worrying (even more so when it is not expected to improve in the coming years resulting in acceleration of the rate of our population decline), the fact that in almost half (459 out of 1036) Municipal Units located almost all in the mountainous and semi-mountainous part of mainland Greece there are already more than 3 deaths per birth, causes even more concern as future demographic dynamics of these Sections is hypothecated.

The super-predominance in those of deaths, a result mainly of their age structures that combine many elderly people (see increased deaths) and a limited number of people of family-making age (see few births) raises reasonable doubts as to the possibility of slowing down their population collapse, a collapse that will inevitably mortgage their social and economic dynamics.